Service Included

by Phoebe Damrosch

  Here is a possible sequence of VIP canapés:

  1. SOUP: Some are clear consommés, some simple purees, others more complex veloutés and foams.

  2. SAVORY SORBETS (in warmer months):These might be beet, basil, red pepper, cilantro, or even a fruit like yuzu paired with Molokai salt, a black salt from Hawaii.

  3. CAVIAR:Oysters and Pearls is the restaurant’s most famous caviar preparation, but one might see caviar on a potato blini, cauliflower panna cotta, pickled oysters, apple granita, or avocado mousse with pistachio oil.

  4. COLD FISH: This really depends on the season and could be anything from a crab claw to sea urchin.

  5. HOT FISH: Again, the possibilities are endless. If there isn’t also a tempura canapé course, tempura is a possibility, but so is a turbot cheek or a salmon chop (that one’s in the cookbook).

  6. CUSTARD: No matter the VIP, there will certainly be a course devoted solely to eggs and truffles: custards with truffle ragout, eggs scrambled with truffle coulis or coddled with truffle beurre noisette. My favorite, the deviled egg with a truffle “Pop-Tart,” looks exactly like the picnic food and toaster treat except that the pastry is filled with a marmalade of Périgord truffles and drizzled with truffle frosting.

  7. MEAT: The kitchen has a lot of fun with this course, wrapping aged beef around fried bone marrow, frying up some quail wings, or braising a little cockscomb. If the restaurant knows that a guest likes offal, most likely this is where she will get her sweetbreads or brains.

  In order to understand the sequence of VIP canapés, we were taught a little etymology 101. At the French Laundry and Per Se, the whole range of amuse-bouches (literally translating to “mouth amusers”), from soups to blini, is referred to as canapés. This is, however, not technically accurate. The word canapé comes from the French word for couch, and actually refers to the specific practice of resting a savory topping on a piece of toast or cracker like Mr. Bichalot’s slippered feet on his chaise longue, only infinitely more savory.

  The word can be traced by an alternate route to the Greek konops, meaning “mosquito.” Having yet discovered the joys of DDT, the Greeks hung netting called konopion around their beds and couches to protect themselves from the konops, a technique that was later adopted by the Romans. They called the curtains conopeum, which became the Latin canopeum, the Middle English canope, and eventually “canopy.” How the French came to use canapé to refer to a couch instead of a curtain is beyond the limits of my steepability, but we have stolen the word for use in Modern English and retained its Middle English meaning.

  Upon further research (I know, I know), I learned that traditional canapés begin with a bread base, usually measuring one-eighth to one-quarter inch in thickness, shaped in a triangle, round, or strip, and fried, sautéed, or toasted to add crunch. They should be able to be eaten in less than three bites, although one bite is preferable for standing hors d’oeuvres, and should not be so brittle as to crumble on haute couture.

  Tell Mr. and Mrs. Bichalot that I’ll be right there.

  Canapés trespass upon an array of different traditions. Broadly, they fall under the heading of hors d’oeuvres, an eighteenth-century French term later used to describe cuisines from other nations as well, meaning “outside the work” or out of the ordinary course of things, much like this little tangent of mine. Usually hors d’oeuvres are served at the opening of a meal, as a means of whetting the appetite. Canapés have different guises in different cultures, from the Italian crostini or bruschetta to Chinese dim sum. The English call their version savories, although they have fallen a bit out of fashion since the eighteenth century, like the English themselves, when they were served before or instead of dessert (the savories, not the English), where a cheese course falls in French cuisine. One English recipe from 1759 features anchovy fillets on fried bread fingers with Parmesan and Seville orange juice. Later, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, small savories took on fanciful names such as “angels on horseback” (fried oysters wrapped in bacon and served on fried bread slices). British savories exist today in what food historian Alan Davidson calls in the Oxford Companion to Food the “time warp” of London clubs and nostalgic restaurants.

  I will admit that some of that research I did on my own, but the majority of it came from materials we were given at Per Se. Despite the serious curriculum, however, Chef Keller made it clear that he did not take himself or his food too seriously, “This is not religion. It is food,” he said in one of our training sessions. Or, as another friend in the business once said, it’s just chicken under a tree. The whimsical tone set with the salmon cornet continues throughout the meal. Before you have a chance to truly mourn the passing of the cornet, the Oysters and Pearls arrives. Butter-poached oysters (usually Island Creek, Bagaduce, or Malpec, depending on availability) swim in a creamy sabayon of pearl tapioca and are heaped generously with caviar (Iranian osetra, Russian sevruga, or American). The courses that follow maintain a playful and ironic bent. Macaroni and Cheese is a cute name for lobster with mascarpone-enriched orzo pasta. Soup and a Sandwich features a seasonal soup and a tiny brioche sandwich with shaved black truffles inside.

  For the most part, after the meat canapé, VIPs begin to follow a path similar to their fellow diners. As you observed earlier, Mr. and Mrs. Bichalot moved from the salmon cornet to Oysters and Pearls. At this point, they proceed to the salad or foie gras course. Mr. Bichalot really shouldn’t because of his cholesterol—still, he supposes just this once a little foie gras won’t hurt, but Mrs. Bichalot finds liver of all kinds repulsive, so she will go with the salad of hearts of palm with truffle coulis. This will be followed by a swimming fish. Next is a lobster course, although between November and April you might find scallops. The first meat course is usually a light meat such as quail, rabbit, duck, or pork, while the second meat course features a fuller meat, often beef, lamb, or veal, usually roasted, grilled, or braised. The composed cheese course, a piece of art on a plate, precedes sorbet and, finally, dessert. Well, almost finally. The mignardises that follow are completely optional: tiny pots de crème and crème brûlée, shortbread, macaroons, and chocolate truffles.

  During the course of this menu, not only were we to seamlessly set, or mark, the table, serve the food, explain to the guests what they were about to eat, and clear the plates so as to keep the pace without rushing the guest, but we often had to drizzle, shave, grate, or ladle some final touch onto the dish. Luckily we had an entire seminar devoted to condiments.

  At some restaurants, this would be a quick seminar: the canapé might be crabmeat on a piece of toast with an Asian vinaigrette and a sprig of something green; pepper, olive oil, and slices of lemon upon request would be the extent of the condiments. Not so at Per Se. Chef Keller used things like salt and lemon to intensify flavor, but thought of artisanal oils and vinegars as condiments that should be offered to the guest at the table by a server who appreciated the product. We tasted and discussed French and Italian olive oils (because the French pick their olives later in the season, French olive oil tends to be rounder and sweeter while Italian oil is often a little spicier). We learned the difference between forced infusion done in the kitchen for something like the thyme oil often paired with lamb and oils infused with, say, lemon zest, at the press. Tasting Armando Manni’s olive oil from Tuscany led to a discussion of the effect of air, light, and temperature on the oil. By packing his two oils (Per Me and Per Mio Figlio) in small, dark anti-UV bottles marked with their vintage, Manni preserves more of the beneficial phenols in his oil that are usually lost in generic oils. We also tasted banyuls, truffles, and twenty-year aged balsamic vinegars.

  Was this overkill? If we were simply learning the ingredients in the kitchen, I might have said so. But if I was going to be serving one-hundred-year vinegar drip by drip from a silver spoon onto the plates of restaurant critics and movie stars, I wanted to know exactly what I was dripping. And this was just the beginning of the day’s seminar. When it came to canapés,
we had theory to learn before we even got to the practical.

  Deep in the trenches of training, I was still following and taking copious notes, which I would attempt to commit to memory when no one was looking. I understood why dishes on the menu increased in weight and size from, say a caviar preparation in the beginning to braised pork shoulder later in the menu, but when put on the spot I still wasn’t sure into which meat course veal or duck would fall or why cold foie gras preparations were offered with the salad course while hot foie gras took the place of the first meat course. Some of it I would just have to trust I would get eventually, but there were a few tricks as well.

  It should say something about the depth of knowledge in every department that Paul Roberts, the wine director, initially outlined the menu for us—and not Chef Keller or even the maître d’. When it came to cheeses, most of us would admit, if only to ourselves, that we were lost. If you had asked me the difference between Cabacou and Chabichou, I would have suggested calling the whole thing off.

  “Repeat after me,” Paul instructed us. “Goat, cow, sheep, blue.”

  “Goat, cow, sheep, blue,” we echoed back once, then again, and then again.

  Paul conducted from the front of the room with an imaginary baton I pictured as a breadstick. By George, it seemed we’d got it. If a guest ever pointed to a cheese and for the life us we couldn’t remember if it was raw or pasteurized, washed rind or wrapped in hoja santa leaves, all we had to do was think to ourselves, goat, cow, sheep, blue, for they were always listed in that order. Then at least we would have one thing to say about the cheese before we ran to the back to look it up.

  During the course of menu training, we had guest speakers discuss heritage birds and wild mushrooms, the difference between Iranian and Russian caviar, and the ideal brewing techniques for black, green, and white tea. But even more inspiring were the times when cooks from a certain department sat at the front of the room and explained how they got there and how they did their jobs. Generally, young chefs don’t have much chance to address crowds and Thomas often had to coach them with leading questions. I had already noticed that in Chef Keller’s kitchens, everyone was called “chef,” not only The Chef. In fact, everyone who worked in the restaurant, from the reservationists to the coffee server, was called “chef.” It was an equalizer, a sign of respect for people’s métiers, and a great way to get out of learning hundreds of coworkers’ names. Not that Thomas didn’t know our names, because, for the most part, he did. It was surprisingly hard to resist, and I was soon calling my mother “chef,” as well as cabdrivers and guests. I even fell into the habit of calling friends “chefie,” which even I found irritating. Once, when I called a man I was dating “chef,” he became irate.

  “Who’s Jeff?” he demanded. When I tried to explain that I had actually called him “chef,” he looked dubious.

  “I bet you know who this Jeff is, you little Judas,” he said to the dog sitting at the end of the bed—whom I regularly called “chef” as well.

  For the people in my life who still didn’t appreciate the intensity of this training, I simply explained that one day we tasted nine different salts and another day we tasted sixteen kinds of chocolate. This was impressive, but there was one final piece to the menu that blew my mind. At Per Se and the French Laundry, there is no repetition of ingredients on a guest’s menu, besides luxuries such as truffles and foie gras. If there were almonds on the pompano, the pastry department would have to skip the almond milk sorbet they were so excited about. If, in the dead of winter, when fruit options are already limited, there was grapefruit on the salad, that was off limits for other dishes as well. When I heard this, I began to understand the true virtuosity of the menu. I also pitied the chefs. One of them, who worked cheese, told me that at the end of the night, when all the chefs gathered to plan the next day’s menu, he always had the perfect accompaniments in mind for certain cheeses. Let’s say he was planning a carrot slaw and pickled dates. The fish chef de partie claimed peas and carrots for the lobster prep, the meat chef de partie wanted dates with the lamb, and by the time they got to cheese, the poor chef was on plan D. I felt for him, but I had once been served a tasting menu at a wonderful restaurant specializing in seasonal produce during spring. There had been asparagus in literally every dish. I love asparagus, but after chilled asparagus soup, fiddlehead and asparagus salad, and saddle of rabbit with sautéed asparagus, I was tired of it.

  I am certain that Mr. and Mrs. Bichalot, on the other hand, were far from bored. They had a few words about the apathetic motion sensor at the bathroom sink and the lack of black napkins for those in black suits and the fact that they had to wait on the phone for hours to get a reservation and that the sliding front door was hard to figure out and that there are too many quotation marks in the menu, but other than that it was fabulous. The maître d’ showed them out, the backserver swooped in with a large silver tray to load the remaining dishes, and the coffee servers followed with a freshly pressed tablecloth. In a few moments, table five would be reset and another party would be ready to be told about the choices of water and bread and to receive their salmon cornets.

  Somewhere toward the end of our training, just as I was beginning to feel comfortable, we were ushered into a conference room and given the first of what would be many tests. So much for steeping. Questions ranged from the difference between black and summer truffles, the grape in Vouvray, whether we brown the bones for veal stock, the definition of glaçage, and my favorite—which I still can’t answer: “Circle the correct ONE: Cippolini, Cipolini, Cipollini, Cipolinni.”

  I got every one of the above wrong, but that last one was a cruel and unusual question, so it doesn’t count.

  * * *

  • A TIP •

  Please enable us to give you what you ordered by making enough space for it. There should be at least ten inches in front of you that are free of:

  hands

  elbows

  silverware

  bread plates

  teacups

  wineglasses and ample bosoms

  * * *

  • fire! •

  bETWEEN TRAINING AND opening night, we suited up for a purgatorial period known as the “soft opening” or “friends-and-family.” In theory, this grace period would allow us to work out any kinks in our service. In actuality, our guinea pigs were the most informed and critical of all possible guests: members of the press, celebrities, French Laundry regulars, managers’ and chefs’ spouses, and our peers, who knew better than anyone just how badly we blundered.

  Our first encounter with the public took place on February 4: a black-tie opening gala for the $1.8 billion, 2.8 million-square-foot Time Warner Center. In the hype, there were even rumors that the president might grace us with his presence. He didn’t show, but we were not wanting for fame and fortune. Politicians, newscasters, designers, actors, opera singers, rappers, authors, and business tycoons strolled through the vertical urban retail project (mall), while Cirque du Soleil performed in the vaulted glass lobby.

  It just so happened that the party coincided with the strapless glitz of New York’s Fashion Week. Trays of champagne flutes were enveloped by throngs of women with blinding jewels and men with blindingly white teeth. Trays of pastry, however, caused the same crowds to recoil. I found myself bristling at this reception, not because we servers were ignored—holding a tray hardly deserved flattery—but because our guests seemed not to notice the food, the room, or even the view. When I passed Patrick, my backserver friend, on my way to the kitchen to secure a single spoon of salmon tartare for a woman “allergic” to dairy, wheat, and refined sugar, we paused for a moment at the window to look at the moon. It loomed over the park like a gold coin.

  Later in the week, a famous comedian booked the restaurant for a private party, to which he invited one hundred of his closest friends. When we learned in the preshift meeting that, due to a serious allergy, the host requested there be no truffles on the menu, Patrick lea
ned over and whispered, “What percentage of the population even knows it’s allergic to truffles?” He and I were on canapé duty, passing tiny cups of curried cauliflower soup, applewood-smoked bacon popcorn, and bonito-wasabi Rice Krispie treats.

  By the end of the week, I was tired of holding trays and repeating “Salmon cornet with red onion crème fraîche?” (Although, offering salmon to a famous author quite similarly named was a highlight of the week. I approached him anxiously chanting “sammen, sammen, sammen” under my breath so as to be sure I didn’t pronounce the l by mistake.) I was ready to put down my trays of canapés and start serving some real food, but I had no idea what I was in for.

  The first night of mock service, we had one seating and one menu, but the pace dragged and our poor friends and family were held at the tables for hours, the jury of a particularly tedious trial. The pace improved on the second night, but this time it was our turn to suffer. If our experience was anything like that of the French Laundry, the majority of our guests would choose the chef’s tasting menu, with or without our encouragement. It seemed to me that if one wanted large portions and fewer courses, there were hundreds of restaurants around the city that excelled in such a menu. What we did well was the tasting menu, with its diverse flavors that were designed to flow in a certain order. Still, for whatever reason, the management decided to offer a menu with larger portions when we opened. And on the second day of friends-and-family, they thought it would be good practice to serve only five-course menus.

  The worst order for the backserver, the kitchen, and, arguably, the guests, was one that mixed and matched from all the menus. Instead of all having the same fish course (fish fork, fish knife, and sauce spoon for everyone), one guest would have the fish from the chef’s tasting (fish gear), one would have the jícama salad from the tasting of vegetables (small fork, small knife), one would have nothing in front of him because he had ordered the five-course menu (silverware and a show plate), and one guest, who ordered the chef’s tasting but didn’t like fish, would have something like pasta (small fork, small knife, spoon). It was a nightmare for the restaurant and an alienating dining experience for the guests.